


Ninety-Nine Percent Over It

by modern_leper



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Mild Angst, Post-Dead Guy in Room 4, Stevie has slightly more feelings than she lets on, Talking to the ex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:06:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22152985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modern_leper/pseuds/modern_leper
Summary: “You and David used to be a...thing, right?”“A...oh. Oh.” This is not the question Stevie was expecting.-----Patrick wants to know if Stevie still has feelings for David. Stevie wants to crawl in a hole rather than have this discussion.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose, Stevie Budd/David Rose
Comments: 17
Kudos: 281





	Ninety-Nine Percent Over It

**Author's Note:**

> I always wondered when and how Patrick came to to terms with the fact that David used to sleep with his best friend. Fair warning, this isn't a jealous Patrick story. Not that the show hasn't established that he's got that side to him, but I'd like to think he'd realize he's actually got a lot in common with someone who once fell for David.
> 
> There's also a small Park & Rec easter egg in here for any fans.

Stevie is clearly surprised when she opens her apartment door to find Patrick standing there. He’s got a tray of coffee and a brown paper bag in his hands, and he holds them up by way of greeting.

“It’s early,” she says through a yawn.

“I know.”

“Like, heinously early.”

“It’s 8:15.” 

“Yeah, like I said, heinously early.”

Patrick exaggerates a sympathy frown and gives the paper bag a little shake. “I brought baked goods to make up for it.”

Stevie narrows her eyes. “What kind of baked goods?”

“One of Twyla’s homemade banana nut muffins, still warm. Or a raspberry danish if that’s more your speed.”

“You say ‘or’ like I can only eat one or the other…”

Patrick sighs and shoves the bag into her hands. “All yours. But do you mind if I watch you eat my breakfast inside the apartment?”

Stevie peeks inside the bag and nods. “Acceptable.” She turns on her heel and marches back to her kitchen, which Patrick takes as his signal to follow her.

“So to what do I owe the pleasure?” she calls back over her shoulder while extracting a plate from a high shelf.

Patrick drops down into a faded red chair at her dining room table and almost immediately reaches out to nervously pick at the chipped formica top. His brain clocks what his hand is about to do at the last second and forces him to wrap both hands around his coffee cup instead. He’s grateful that Stevie is too preoccupied with buttering her muffin to notice. 

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” he replies, hoping his voice sounds calmer than he feels.

Stevie joins him at the table, plate loaded with both muffin and danish as promised. “About you and David?” she asks, waggling her eyebrows salaciously. Or as salaciously as someone can look while taking a bite of danish.

Patrick pauses with his coffee halfway to his mouth.

“What about me and David?”

Stevie gives him a look that all but screams ‘duh’. “You guys finally got together right?”

She already knows. Of course she does.

“I didn’t know David had told you.”

“He didn’t,” she says, switching over to the muffin. She takes a bite and frowns. “Not Twyla’s best work,” she declares, pushing the rest of the muffin over to Patrick. He’s too busy flipping through a mental rolodex to object to being offered subpar leftovers.

“Alexis?” he ventures a guess.

Stevie forms her hand into a finger gun and points it at Patrick. “Bingo.” 

She signals for Patrick to hand her a napkin from the counter and he obliges. “Sorry,” she says, realizing that she might have just spoiled the whole purpose of Patrick’s visit. “You really didn’t have a chance at keeping this under wraps once she found out.”

Patrick considers this, remembering David’s explanation for how Moira had already been filled in the morning after they’d kissed. “I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised. Safe to assume to whole town knows?”

“And most of southern Ontario,” she agrees. She leans in conspiratorially. “It might have even reached Justin Trudeau by now. Good news is I hear he sends a pretty solid fruit basket, so at least you’ve got that to look forward to.”

He laughs, grateful that she knows how to use her power of sarcasm for good as well as evil. He starts to fiddle with the lid of his cup, unable to keep his hand still, and becomes painfully aware of how long it’s been since he last spoke. 

“So, um...that’s actually only part of what I came here to talk to you about,” he finally says.

“Oh, sure,” Stevie perks up, her curiosity piqued. “What’s up?”

More silence, more fiddling with his cup. Eventually Stevie reaches across the table and snatches it from him. “Use it or lose it man, playground rules apply.”

He smiles tightly. “Sorry,” he says. “I had a lot of this rehearsed before I came over here and now my mind is just completely blank.”

“Mmkay,” Stevie replies, intrigue being replaced by small twinge of uneasiness. “Well, do you remember how you were going to start?”

Patrick nods.

“Alright, so begin at the beginning then.”

He nods again and takes a deep breath. “You and David used to be a...thing, right?”

“A...oh. _Oh_.” This is not the question Stevie was expecting. She feels the danish doing a kick-flip in her stomach. “No,” she says quickly. “I mean - yes, technically- but not like...not a serious thing. A very, very non-serious thing. It was just…” she trails off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. 

“Sex?” Patrick offers. 

“Yes, sex!” She immediately cringes at the level of enthusiasm in her voice. She suspects it’s not really what her former fuck buddy’s new boyfriend really wanted to hear, though still probably preferable to the alternative of a deeply felt romantic connection. 

To her surprise, Patrick actually starts laughing. Two minutes ago he’d been white as a sheet with a failing grasp of the English language and now he was laughing at her. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally manages to get out, still chuckling. “I didn’t really know what to expect from this conversation but you screaming ‘yes, sex!’ loud enough to wake you neighbors definitely wasn’t it.” 

Stevie feels the heat of embarrassment rising in her cheeks and buries her face in her hands. “I would chalk this up to the fact that I’m barely awake right now but to be honest this level of tact is pretty on brand for me.”

She feels Patrick’s hand on her shoulder and looks up. He’s not laughing anymore, but there’s still the ghost of a smile on his face. “No one who puts a lot of stock in tact would ever make it as David’s best friend.”

She peeks her face out of her hands. “And how do you know he’s my best friend?”

“I don’t,” he admits. “But I’m pretty sure you’re his.”

Stevie fights not to look away, reminding herself that she has been making a concerted effort to not immediately shy away from any and all forms of intimacy. 

“So you came here to make sure that there’s nothing still going on between David and I?” she asks, the words sending a wave of queasiness through her.

Patrick's body has visibly relaxed, as though all he needed was the seal of awkwardness to be cracked before he could remember that he was talking to a friend, no matter how uncomfortable the topic of conversation may be. He weighs his words carefully before he speaks. “I guess...I guess I just came here to make sure I’m not stepping on any toes.”

“Stepping on any...you don’t think we still...that there’s anything…” None of this is coming out right. “Because there’s not, anymore. There was barely anything to begin with.”

Patrick takes the opportunity provided by her babbling to steal his coffee back from her side of the table, feeling more confident in his ability to get it down without mangling the cup to death first.

“Stevie, take a breath. I’m not accusing you of anything. I just…”

“Just what?” she presses nervously.

“I’ve just seen the way you look at him.”

She looks down at the table and picks at the chipped spot that Patrick had wanted to have a go at earlier. “I, uh, don’t look at him any way. I mean sure I look at him for, like, conversational purposes, but I don’t, you know, _look_ at him.”

Patrick places a hand gently on top of hers, partly to get her face him again, and partly to save her tabletop from death by fingernail. “Stevie, I’ll admit the fact that it took me almost thirty years to figure out that my sexual compass doesn’t exactly point due hetero isn’t really a testament to my observational skills, but you do. Look at him, I mean.”

“Of course I do, he’s my best friend. You said so yourself.” 

He smiles and she doesn’t like the sympathy she sees in it. “You look at him the way I imagine I looked at a few of my best friends growing up. A way that makes a lot more sense now, retroactively speaking.”

Stevie leans back in her chair, allowing her head to fall backwards as well. She groans at the ceiling. 

“Well that is less than ideal.”

Patrick chuckles, sips his coffee. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

She pulls herself upright and crosses her arms of her chest protectively. “I’m sorry,” she offers weakly. The word barely scratches the surface of what she’s feeling, but she doesn’t know where else to start.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Patrick tells her, and he means it. He's acutely aware of just how easy it is to fall for David. “I didn’t come here to do the jealous boyfriend thing. Not that I'm his - I mean, it’s only been a couple days, we haven’t labeled - never mind. I just...I don’t want you to think that I’m _that_ guy.”

“Nobody ever is,” Stevie says. “Until they are.”

“No, I suppose not,” Patrick concedes. “But I‘m smart enough to realize that David’s got a past, just like everyone else.”

Stevie cocks an eyebrow. “You sure about that? Because he once told me he’d hooked up with almost half the cast of Hamilton. Original cast, and that’s not including understudies.”

“Okay so maybe not _exactly_ like everyone else -”

“I would think not.”

“-but that’s fine. He wouldn’t be who he is without that past. I’m here because you’re important to David, and David’s important to me.”

Stevie looks at him appraisingly, remembering why she’d found him so easy to like in the first place, and mentally pats herself on the back for being a better judge of character for the sake of David’s romantic life than her own.

“So does he know?” Patrick asks. She doesn’t need to make him explain what he means.

Stevie tilts her head back and forth indecisively."Yes and no."

"How’s that now?" 

"Well, yes because I told him."

Patrick coughs, choking on his coffee. "You did? Like, recently?" 

Stevie shakes her head. "A couple months after his family moved here they got an offer from someone to buy the town. David started packing before Mr. Rose could even finish telling them the good news."

"I didn't know that," Patrick says, mostly to himself. 

"It was before you moved here," Stevie explains. "And besides, the deal fell through. Guy had a heart attack before he could sign the contract. Went tits up right in Roland's dining room.” 

"Jesus Christ." He winces at the mental image of someone keeling over into a bowl of Jocelyn’s mac n’ cheese. 

"Yeah, no kidding. Anyway, David offered to take me back to New York with him."

Patrick tries not to look surprised but fails spectacularly. 

Stevie sees the look on his face, and briefly wonders how it took David so long to figure out that Patrick was into him. The guy has zero chill. "I turned him down."

Patrick’s brows shoot up. "Why?" 

"Oh it’s a tale as old as time: because I liked a guy and he didn't like me back. Not in the same way at least. It was why we stopped the whole friends with benefits thing in the first place, so we could actually go back to just being friends. He, uh…he had an easier time making that switch than I did."

"It was self preservation then?" 

Stevie nodded. "Not usually my forte, but I do have the occasional moment of emotional clarity here and there."

"And now…" Patrick didn't really know what to say. What's the least offensive way of asking someone if they're in love with your kinda-maybe-first ever boyfriend? More importantly, how do you make them believe that you won't be mad if they are? 

"Now I am…” she stares off, doing mental math with her own emotions. “Let's call it ninety-nine percent over it."

"And the other one percent?" 

Stevie thinks about it, about how much of yourself you can contain in just one percent. "That's the part that's always going to wonder if I'm ever going to find someone else who gets me the way he does. He was the first guy I ever hooked up with because I actually liked spending time with him, and not just because it's a small town and he was, you know, _there_.”

“That’s a pretty low bar you set for yourself there,” Patrick notes. “No offense,” he adds quickly.

Stevie shrugs, not really taking any. “When you grow up in a town where the cows outnumber people two to one, standards become somewhat relative.”

“Fair enough.”

“I mean, the first time we...you know. It only happened because we were super high and a little bit drunk, with some boredom and horniness sprinkled on top."

She mimes throwing a dash of sprinkles on an invisible cake and it makes Patrick smile. 

Stevie sags back into her chair, lost in thought for a moment. "Sometimes,” she begins, then pauses. “Sometimes it's easy to imagine a version of things where it worked out with us. I think that’s why that one percent still exists, because it can be whatever I want it to be.” She smirks, and it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “The reality is we probably would have killed each other by now, but what can you do? The mind, it likes to wander."

"Yeah," Patrick says softly. "Mine's been doing a lot of that lately."

Stevie reaches out and puts her hand on his knee. "Hey,” she says, squeezing gently to get his attention. “You know I'm really happy for you right? For the both of you. Might sound kind of counter-intuitive given the theme of our little discussion, but I mean it. You're a good guy Patrick. He deserves someone good. So do you."

Patrick looks at her with wide brown eyes, ones that can't help but portray honesty, and he smiles. "Thank you Stevie."

"Sure took you long enough huh?" 

Patrick laughs. "If I'd know how effective getting stoned was then I wouldn't have taken the long way around."

“Nah, I like your way better.”

“My way involves a sexual identity crisis and making out with my business partner in the stockroom after closing.”

“My way involved a disco ball and red satin sheets.”

“Oh my god,” he physically recoils at the thought.

“We were _very_ high and -

Patrick holds up a hand to stop her. “You know what, I really meant it when I said I didn’t come here to do the jealous partner thing, but if we can limit the details of your sexual encounters with David that would be awesome.”

Stevie cackles. _Cackles_ \- there’s really no other word for it - but offers her hand. Patrick takes it and they shake. “Deal,” she says.

Patrick glances down at his watch. “Shit,” he mutters. “I have to open in the store in, well, now basically."

He moves to gather the trash off the table and Stevie shooes him away. “I got it, I got it, don’t make yourself any later than you already are.” 

He reaches the door and surprises her by doing a quick about-face. “David’s made it known that you’re not the biggest fan of physical displays of affection but I’m going to hug you now, okay?”

Stevie purses her lips and considers shoving him out the door, but instead she shrugs and reluctantly opens her arms. _It’s the eyes_ , she thinks to herself. _It’s like trying to say no to a freaking puppy._

“Patrick?” she asks into his shoulder.

“Mm?”

“If you ever come here to have a talk like this again, bring whiskey instead.”

  
  
  
  



End file.
